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The source of our drinking water is groundwater from two aquifers, the Mesilla and Jornada Bolsons.
Show All Answers
Discolored water is due to naturally occurring minerals (iron and manganese) found in our water supply. Although Las Cruces Utilities is not required by law to chlorinate our water, we do; it assures our community that we do not have coliform bacteria issues within the aquifer or water distribution system. However, even a tiny amount of chlorine can cause the iron and manganese to drop out of solution in the water, giving it a dark tint.
Because the minerals have changed from a liquid mineral to a solid mineral and settled out in the pipes. When an increase in demand occurs, the settled minerals will move, which normally occurs in the summer when people are using more water. This can also be caused by water surging through the lines when a break occurs.
Two methods have been adopted to minimize discolored water:
Although the discolored water has no health risks associated with it, if you choose not to use it, turn off all your taps and please notify the Las Cruces Utilities Dispatch at 575-526-0500 so we can arrange for the system to be flushed in your area. As soon as flushing is complete, run your cold water taps to clear the discolored water from your own lines.
We recommend that you wait to do your laundry until the discolored water clears, so that your clothing and other items in the washing machine are not stained.
For more information, please refer to our Red Water Fact Sheet (PDF).
The rotten egg or sulfur smell is caused by naturally occurring sulfide ions in the City's source water. When water sits in the main lines for long periods of time without movement, the sulfide can form hydrogen sulfide gas. The gas remains entrained in the water until it leaves the customer's water taps.
If you smell a rotten egg or sulfur smell from your cold water, call the Las Cruces Utilities Water Production Section at 575-528-3547 so they can send an operator to make sure that you have an ideal level of residual chlorine, and if not, flush the lines. If you smell a rotten egg or sulfur smell from your hot water, you may need to flush your hot water heater and raise the temperature setting slightly to prevent proliferation of bacteria that feed on the iron in the water.
The Las Cruces Utilities Department's standard operating procedures state that the utility will provide water pressure measured on the customer's side of the meter at a pressure between 20 and 120 pounds per square inch (PSI).
If the customer requires higher pressure than what is being delivered at the point of delivery (the water meter), the customer can install a booster pump at the customer's cost. If the pressure at the point of delivery is higher than what the customer desires, the customer can install a pressure reducing valve at the customer's cost. For a pressure test, call Utilities Dispatch at 575-526-0500.
There might be a water line break that we need to go out and repair. Please notify the Las Cruces Utilities Dispatch at 575-526-0500.
City water is as safe as bottled water. Bottled water is water that has been treated through some type of filtration process to remove some of the naturally occurring minerals in the water that may give it a distinct taste. City water is not filtered; however, it is sampled and analyzed for up to 121 potential contaminants and meets or exceeds all requirements set by the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
Watering days and restrictions can be found on the Water Conservation page.
Yes, a construction meter is set up and the contractor will be charged for the water consumption. If you see anyone drawing water from a hydrant that does not have a water meter, please notify the Las Cruces Utilities Dispatch immediately at 575-526-0500.


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Overhauling steam turbines
Around an ethylene plant in 30 days
The city of Barrancabermeja is known as the "oil capital" of Colombia — a good place for an ethylene plant. Our customer's mill can produce 44 000 tons of ethylene and 8 800 tons of propylene per year — 144 tons per day. Such mills run continuously.
Sulzer's service centers in Texas and Bogotá worked together to inspect and repair the three turbines. Preventive maintenance keeps installations running reliably and at maximum efficiency. To minimize production losses, maintenance must be done quickly. For its steam cracking process, the Barrancabermeja plant employs steam-powered turbine compressor trains before the distillation phase of processing the gases.
Ethylene gets turned into the world's most-used plastic
Ethylene is a colorless, flammable gas. It is widely used in the chemical industry. More than half of the ethylene supply goes toward making polyethylene: plastic used for packaging and carrier bags. Ethylene is often produced in the petrochemical industry by steam cracking.
Planning started one year ahead
Doing maintenance during a planned outage requires careful management. Since 1999, the Colombian mill relied on Sulzer to repair its turbomachinery. The customer initially contracted Sulzer to perform all the planning activities for the compressor deck during the outage and to inspect and repair the spare set of rotors. Sulzer exchanged the running compressor rotors with the shop repaired spare units which were repaired in Houston before, to allow fast turnaround. Subsequently, the customer asked Sulzer to carry out all compressor deck activities during the outage. All of this work had to be completed within 30 days.
Those who have ever organized a wedding know what it's like to plan a one-day event. Imagine how long it takes to plan a 30-day overhaul with 12 service technicians. That's what we did.
Excellent project management
Sulzer deployed two project managers to oversee the schedule. One was José Saldana, a talented young engineer. "The project manager is responsible for the smooth workflow of the whole project. One important planning step is to break down the overhaul maintenance work into sequences of work. Then we list all requirements for this sequence, timeframe, and how many people are needed to manage the project on time."
Overhaul and testing in Houston
The spare rotors that were installed by our Field Service team had been previously remanufactured at the Houston facility; each component had been brought back to engineering specification. "Houston is our flagship repair center. We have a systematic approach with checklists for each remanufacturing order. Starting with an initial inspection, and comprehensive measurements followed by grit cleaning and disassembly with further non-destructive testing (NDT). This allows us to determine exactly the repairs we will recommend to the client," says José Saldana.
In cases where the rotor has suffered a shaft failure at one end, it may be necessary to replace the end with a shaft stub. Where original components, such as impellers, are damaged, we must create new parts.
Once the engineers have refurbished or remanufactured the components, they then restack and balance the rotor. Large components, such as the Colombian plant's steam turbines, require a large balancing bunker like ours that provides state-of-the-art analysis (Fig. 2).
Back in full working order
Sulzer handed the complete compressor deck back to our satisfied customer on time. After that, our field service team helped startup the compressor deck and enable the plant to commence normal production.
Your service center
Janice Fillinger
Sales Account Manager
Sulzer Electro-Mechanical Services (US) Inc.
1910 Jasmine Drive
77503 Pasadena, TX

subset: commoncrawl


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One of the things we all want to do is to become more environmentally conscious and slim down our carbon footprintthe measure of our impact on the environment. From sweeping changes like making our packaging "greener" to little things like switching to filtered tap water at the office instead of using big plastic water cooler jugs, we're trying to do our part to try to make our planet as healthy as we try to make our bodies. After all, no matter how much we work out and eat healthily, if our environment is sick, before long, we will be too. Here are some ideas for going green. You might not become Leonardo DiCaprio or Al Gore overnight, but just changing one small habit every month could add up to a big difference for the planet and your pocketbook too.
I've been in the same apartment for about 10 years. And the apartment came with a refrigerator that had been there a lot longer than that. My first clue that something might be up with the door seal was the layer of rust that pitted the length of the door. My second clue should have been that my electric bill was about $80 to $100 a month, which is pretty steep for a one-bedroom apartment, even in L.A. Finally, last year my fridge gave up the ghost and my landlord sprung for a new Energy Star-rated fridge. Not top of the line, but a decent $400 model. My electric bill dropped $60 the first month. If I had bought that fridge when I moved in, I would have paid it off in electricity savings in just over six months, and I would have pocketed around $6,800 that instead I parceled out to Southern California Edison over the years. Try placing a dollar bill in your refrigerator doorif it comes out too easily once the door is closed, you might have a bad seal. By having your refrigerator resealed or by upgrading your refrigerator, you can save a LOT of money, not to mention what you're doing for the planet. Refrigerators are the worst power consumers, but it's worth checking all of your appliances, including air conditioners, televisions, microwaves, etc., to see if they are Energy Star-rated and if it might be worth your while to upgrade. Some electric companies will offer incentives to replace power-abusing appliances.
You've probably seen more and more of these spiral-shaped fluorescent bulbs around. Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) cost a bit more than regular incandescent bulbs but only use about a quarter of the electricityone bulb can save you up to $30 over the course of its lifetime (which is long, up to 15,000 hours compared to the paltry 750 to 1,000 hours of the incandescent bulb). Count up the light bulbs in your housethat's a lot of money saved. With numbers like that, you can see why countries like Australia have begun phasing in these super-green bulbs by law, and have started banning incandescents. But even on a voluntary basis, the green you save by going green should be a pretty good incentive. For those who believe fluorescent lighting is too cold and don't want their living area lit like an airport restroom, take a look at the newer CFLsas they've grown in popularity, manufacturers have developed new ways to adjust their color temperature. People who visit my CFL-lit abode can't even tell I've replaced my incandescentsand my electric bill dropped another $5 a month. Again, check with your electric company to verify whether any incentive programs exist for replacing your bulbs with CFLs.
Once better recycling techniques were developed for plastic bags, supermarkets were off to the races using the cheaply produced plastic bags. They even put the paper bags in plastic bags. The problem: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that only about 1 percent of the bags get recycled. The rest end up in landfills or as litter, where they begin their 1,000-year decomposition process, leaching their petrochemicals into the soil and groundwater. Other bags go on to become toxic threats to wildlife and sea animals. Many stores have begun refusing to carry these eco-terrors, and almost all now offer some reusable alternative at a reasonable price. Some supermarkets offer discounts or prize drawings for customers who bring their own bags. Plus, the cloth bags are a lot nicerthey don't dig into your hands. And since I keep about 20 in the back of my car (because about another 10 are usually forgotten in my apartment), I always have padding for fragile items.
We've featured a number of articles in this newsletter about the putative health benefits of bottled water, and largely, we don't believe the hype. The bottled-water industry is largely unregulated, so you can never be 100-percent sure what you're going to get. Tap water, on the other hand, is heavily regulated by the EPA, in addition to state and local agencies, so you can be pretty sure what you're going to get. And there are plenty of affordable filters available to make the tap water taste as good as your favorite bottled brand. You'll save tons of money by switching to tap, paying pennies instead of dollars for a liter or two of the wet stuff, but more importantly, you'll be helping the environment in two ways. First, much like the plastic bags, the petroleum-based plastic bottles are largely eco-unfriendly. They can be recycled, but the ones that aren't end up on the millennium-decomposition plan with their plastic bag brethren. Secondly, there's the enormous transportation costsespecially if you're getting your fancy water shipped in from Fiji or Norway. Does American water really taste that much worse that it's worth polluting the oceans, the air, and the land to transport a bottle of H20 halfway across the globe?
And we're not just talking about leaving the seat up or down. Our morning hygiene routines can be the most wasteful part of the day. Starting with brushing your teethif you leave the sink running while you brush your teeth for two minutes, about three gallons of water are going down the drain. Then when you hop in the shower, you're using 2.5 gallons of water per minute. And if your toilet's a bit on the older side, add another 5 gallons per flush. So a 2-minute tooth brushing, 10-minute shower, and toilet flush send a grand total of 33 gallons down the pipes. You can knock down the total by cutting your shower time in half. You can also install a low-flow shower head or faucet aerator, which can cut your water use in half and save you up to $250 a year. Also, if you still have one those water bottles that you stopped using in April lying around, you can fill it with water and put it in your toilet tank. By displacing the tank water, you'll have less wasteful flushes. Replacing your toilet with a newer low-flow model can reduce your flush from 5 gallons to as low as 1.5 gallons. And honestly, if your toilet is old enough to be a 5-gallon model, it's probably a little crusty anyway.
Summer is the perfect time to start getting to know your local farmers' market. If you don't know where yours is, do a little Internet surfingmost communities have farmers' markets or at least cooperatives that allow you the opportunity to shop locally. The advantages are many. You help support your community. You get food so fresh that it may have been in the ground the day before. You can get food with fewer chemicals and preservatives or at least be able to look the producer in the eye and ask, "What's on your apple?" You can save money since you aren't paying for the food to be shipped from some faraway land, which wastes petroleum resources and causes air, sea, and land pollution as with the bottled water. If you have to shop at the supermarket, check what you buy to see where it's produced and try buying products produced locally. Also, don't be afraid to let your supermarket managers know that you'd like them to stock locally grown stuff. If they know you're interested, they'll also be interested. Even better, shop at independently owned grocery stores where the person making the buying decisions is on site.
As a resident of Los Angeles, this is almost heresy to say, but by getting out of your car, you'll be saving fuel and helping your health. You inhale way more pollutants when you're inside your car than when you're outside walking past the traffic. Plus, you're giving yourself huge cardiovascular benefits by getting out and stretching your legs. Think about all your daily errands and consider if any of them could have your car taken out of the equation. Even small changes in your routine can lead to big overall savings in gas and make you and the planet healthier. Think about carpooling or taking public transportation if it's available. You save gas and you can read the paper in the morning instead of cursing the slowpoke driving five miles per hour in front of you. If you have to drive, there are still some ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Try not to be a stop-and-go driver. People who habitually ride the brake and accelerator use up to 30 percent more gas than the people who drive more evenly. Keeping the pressure in your tires up is another way to make your drive more efficient. By losing the junk in the trunk, you can make your ride lighter and you use less gas. By keeping your windows rolled up, you reduce the drag on your caryour car becomes more aerodynamic and requires less fuel. And by going 50 miles per hour instead of 70, you can save 25 percent in fuel efficiency.
If there's one thing that single-handedly contributes the most to the messy rooms piled with junk that I call home, it's paper. By the end of every week I have a waist-high stack of newspapers poised to collapse in my living room. My bedroom floor is littered with subscription cards which have fallen out of magazines that I already have subscriptions to. The top of my desk is a distant memory, buried under stacks of mail mostly unopened. My bookshelves have been crammed to bursting, because apparently on my next day off, I plan to plow through the hundred or so books I impulse-bought to read in my spare time. All of this is at odds with the minimalist aesthetic I claim to pursue. I recycle as much paper as I can, but do I really need all this in the first place? Where to begin? First off, take a magic marker with you when you check the mail. Three magic words, "Return to Sender," or three others, "Remove from List," can begin to make your life a lot less cluttered and ultimately save a lot of paper. Hopefully, people will stop sending you junk, or at the very least, the junk never makes it into your home. There are also services available online that for a small fee will get your name and address scrubbed from most lists. Check with your various credit card and utility companies to see if you can go paperless and receive your bills via email. Also, email the companies who send you catalogs to tell them you'd prefer to receive their information electronically. See if electronic versions of your favorite newspapers and magazines are available. Most have the extra advantage of having an online archive, so, unlike me, you won't have that milk crate full of old New Yorkers that you never had time to finish reading but couldn't bear to throw away. Get to know your library. You can save a fortune on books, and instead of taking up residence in your home, those books that turned out to be not-so-hot only visit you for two or three weeks.
As a consumer society, we literally have tons of stuff that we discard every year. Sure, a lot of it we should never have bought in the first place, but once we have it, we're stuck with it; and if we don't get rid of it, we can't get new stuff! We try to recycle the stuff we can, and can sometimes even talk the city into coming and picking up our toxic stuff like old fridges and TVs. But some stuff just seems destined to go to the junkyard or landfill. Before we let our misguided purchases shuffle off to begin their centuries of decomposition, however, try finding a new home for your soon-to-be-orphaned junk. Have a yard sale. It's a great way to make a little cash and meet your neighbors. You can get your neighbors involved with the sale too. Everyone's got some junk to get rid of. Or see if any of your local thrift stores or charities would be interested. Or try posting on a trading site like eBay or Craigslistyou might even make a buck or two. If you don't even think it's worth a buck or you're just feeling charitable, give the stuff away on Freecycle.org. The important thing is to keep it out of the landfill.
If you're like me, the most toxic place in the house is under the kitchen sink. I have enough chemical solutions to start my own meth lab, which is probably a bit of overkill when all I really need is a little something to wipe off my stovetop once in a while. And the scary partI'm spraying all my surfaces with these toxins and then making food on them. I'm paying top dollar to coat my kitchen in poison and then send toxins down the drain to pollute the groundwater or the ocean or wherever my drain ultimately goes. So I'm getting rid of my most hazardous cleaners and going old school with the cleaning. Almost all of your kitchen-cleaning needs can be handled with baking soda or distilled vinegar (although not togetherremember those make-your-own-volcano science projects?). If there's something that these two cleaning titans can't handle, try Googling around for a green solution. There are message boards all over the place and someone must have found a way to solve the problem without having to resort to chemical warfare.
Beef, chicken, pork, lamb. They're all delicious, and in low-fat, preferably organic varieties, they're also nutritious. But the environmental cost of bringing meat to our dinner tables is huge. Rainforests are cut down to make way for grazing land. All of the cows bred for beef create an enormous methane problem, the old-fashioned way. Plus it takes thousands of gallons of water to produce meat, aside from the fact that it burns tons of fuel and creates tons of pollution to transport it. If we all went vegetarian, or even better, vegan, just one day a week, it would make an enormous impact on the environment. A veg-out day could have cleansing properties for your body and make it a bit easier on your pocketbook.
The lights, the sounds, the presentsthe holidays are here. And even the Grinch wouldn't ask us not to indulge in our annual festival of excess, but there a few things we can do to help the environment without spoiling the fun. Like try hanging LED Christmas lights instead of incandescents. You'll save a lot of energy for the planet and a lot of money on your electric bill. Buy recycled gift wrap. Or find creative ways to wrap presents that don't require gift wraplike using reusable gift bags or making the gift wrap part of the present. I wrap my tabloid-loving friend's presents in the latest supermarket rag. Think about exchanging e-cards this holiday season. It's less of a hassle, saves a lot on postage, and helps the environment by saving paper and the fuel required to deliver the cards via snail mail. If you can't imagine the holidays without a mantel full of cards, at least buy recycled cards. And when the holidays are over, you can take the fronts of the cards and donate them to various charities that recycle them and sell them to raise money the following year.
Disclaimer: BODi® does not guarantee any level of success or income from the BODi Coach Opportunity. Each Coach's income depends on his or her own efforts, diligence, and skill. See the US Statement of Independent Coach Earnings


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The agreement to sell the Sacramento Kings to a Seattle investment group - with the goal of moving the team to Seattle - is not a slam dunk. It still needs NBA approval. And momentum is growing in Sacramento to try to keep the Kings there.
KPLU sports commentator Art Thiel tries to clear up some of the confusion Seattle fans may have about what's going on.
The campaign to keep the Kings in Sacramento began this week with the announcement from Mayor Kevin Johnson that 21 local business people will contribute $1 million each to a new ownership group.
Art says they're serious.
"Generally speaking, only a crisis brings together government and business at once. And they see this as a crisis. The difference between Seattle and Sacramento is that Sacramento has only one pro sports team.
Sacramento's move came a day after a $525-million purchase and sale agreement was signed between the Maloof family, majority owners of the Kings, and a Seattle group led by arena investor Chris Hansen. The agreement still needs the approval of the NBA Board of Governors, who will meet in April.
Passionate fan base
Art points out that Sacramento sold out 19 of the 27 seasons the Kings have played there.
"That's an impressive statement about loyalty that should not be overlooked."
More financial muscle coming?
From Sportspress Northwest: The counterpunch from Sacramento grew more serious with a report Wednesday that California supermarket tycoon Ron Burkle and Bay Area investor Mark Mastrov are in "serious discussions" to team up on a bid to buy the Kings and partner with the city on a plan to help finance a new downtown sports arena, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Art says the campaign began as a grassroots effort, and is growing.
"This is how it starts. And this is what probably could have and should have happened in Seattle, but Howard Shultz never told us the team was for sale."
The Seattle SuperSonics were sold to an Oklahoma investor group led by Clay Bennett in 2006. The team moved to Oklahoma City two years later.
Art draws a parallel to what's happening now in Sacramento.
"The Maloofs have locked elbows for six years and said 'Sacramento, no we're not going to sell the team to anybody.' And then they can say 'Well, we just changed our mind.' And they got, from Chris Hansen, an out-of-town price of $525 million. Now the Maloofs are in this great position to receive a counteroffer."
Sale and relocation completely different things
Art says there's a chance the NBA could approve the sale of the Kings to Hansen but deny relocation.
"If the Sacramento bid is substantial, credible and vetted properly, that means that Chris Hansen could be approved as the owner of the Kings but he must operate them in Sacramento. He will not do that. The only option for him then, if he's denied relocation, is to sell the team. And with each passing day, with each passing millionaire joining the Kings, that prospect looms a little more likely."
Expansion better option for Seattle
Art has said all along that expansion would be the best scenario for Seattle, so the city wouldn't have to put Sacramento through what it went through when the Sonics left town.
"It would be bloodless, it would be orderly, it would be great all the way around. The problem is that Chris Hansen can't begin his project without a team in hand. Even if the (proposed) arena is approved - after the environmental impact statement and after the lawsuits that are fighting it - if some deal can be struck where Hansen gets an expansion team guaranteed in three years, that would be good enough. But the NBA hasn't even touched that one yet."


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Photo from Getty Images .
On Reddit forums that ask "What's a dead giveaway that someone is American?" one trait comes up over and over again: big, toothy grins.
Here's how one Reddit user in Finland put it:
When a stranger on the street smiles at you:
a. you assume he is drunk
b. he is insane
c. he's an American
Last year, I wrote about why some countries seem to smile less than average—and mistrust those who do seem unusually peppy. A country's level of instability, that study found, might be why people who seem happy for no reason in, say, Russia, are considered foolish.
But there's an interesting line of research that helps explain outliers on the other end of the spectrum, too: Americans and their stereotypically mega-watt smiles.
It turns out that countries with lots of immigration have historically relied more on nonverbal communication. Thus, people there might smile more.
For a study published in 2015, an international group of researchers looked at the number of " source countries" that have fed into various nations since the year 1500. Places like Canada and the United States are very diverse, with 63 and 83 source countries, respectively, while countries like China and Zimbabwe are fairly homogenous, with just a few nationalities represented in their populations.
After polling people from 32 countries to learn how much they felt various feelings should be expressed openly, the authors found that emotional expressiveness was correlated with diversity. In other words, when there are a lot of immigrants around, you might have to smile more to build trust and cooperation, since you don't all speak the same language.
People in the more diverse countries also smiled for a different reason than the people in the more homogeneous nations. In the countries with more immigrants, people smiled in order to bond socially. Compared to the less-diverse nations, they were more likely to say smiles were a sign someone "wants to be a close friend of yours." But in the countries that are more uniform, people were more likely to smile to show they were superior to one another. That might be, the authors speculate, because countries without significant influxes of outsiders tend to be more hierarchical, and nonverbal communication helps maintain these delicate power structures.
So Americans smile a lot because our Swedish forefathers wanted to befriend their Italian neighbors, but they couldn't figure out how to pronounce buongiorno. Seems plausible. But there's also something very w i d e about the classic American grin. Why is it that Americans smile with such fervor?
This could be because Americans value high-energy, happy feelings more than some other countries. For a study published last year, researchers compared the official photos of American and Chinese business and government leaders. After coding them according to their levels of "facial muscle movement," they found that American leaders in all contexts were both more likely to smile and showed more "excited" smiles than the Chinese leaders did.
Later, they asked college students from 10 different countries how often they would ideally like to experience certain emotions—from happiness to calmness to hostility—in a given week.
Then, they looked at photos of legislators from those 10 countries. They found that the more a country's college students valued happy, high-energy emotions, like excitement and enthusiasm, the more excited-looking the government officials looked in their photos. (The correlation held after controlling for economic indicators like GDP.) Interestingly, the amount that people in those countries actually felt happy didn't matter. The leaders' excitement appeared to reflect the ideal emotional states of their constituents, not their actual ones.
Other than causing consternation for tourists, these cultural differences in the value and uses of smiles are also why it can be hard for iconic American companies to expand overseas. As a recent episode of Invisibilia showed, when McDonald's entered Russia in the '90s, they had to coach their employees on how to smile. Here's how Yuri Chekalin, a former McDonald's employee, described the experience to Invisibilia host Alix Spiegel:
CHEKALIN: It was an American video, and it was just dubbed in Russian. How you're supposed to smile, how you're supposed to greet.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Glad you came in, hope to see you again real soon.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You bet.
SPIEGEL: And then the lights came back on, and the trainers got down to work breaking down the elements of American cheerfulness into digestible component parts. For example, when you meet someone, you must make direct eye contact, which seemed deeply strange to Yuri.
CHEKALIN: So in Russia we used to—if somebody looks at us, we just kind of look the other way, unless we about to fight or something like that. But in America, he says, you know, when you making eye contact, you smile.
And when Wal-Mart opened stores in Germany, the company also had to tweak its chipper ways to better suit the sober local mores, as The New York Times reported in 2006:
Wal-Mart stopped requiring sales clerks to smile at customers—a practice that some male shoppers interpreted as flirting—and scrapped the morning Wal-Mart chant by staff members.
"People found these things strange; Germans just don't behave that way," said Hans-Martin Poschmann, the secretary of the Verdi union, which represents 5,000 Wal-Mart employees here.
It wasn't enough, alas: Wal-Mart pulled out of Germany that year after losing hundreds of millions of dollars. There were other cultural differences at play, like Wal-Mart's failed attempts to get its German employees to relocate. And while the bosses back at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters might have been cheerier than their Bavarian counterparts, they weren't too happy with unions, a staple of the German labor market. ("Bentonville … thought we were communists," Poschmann, the union secretary, told the Times.)
Like so many other daily practices, in other words, the American smile is a product of our culture. And it can be similarly difficult to export.


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At long last, after nine days of deliberations, an answer to the question on everyone's mind: Er, why was this guy on trial again?
Actually, regardless of the verdict, I'm not sure we're going to get that answer.
Edwards, a former Democratic U.S. senator and presidential nominee, was charged with accepting illegal campaign contributions, falsifying documents and conspiring to receive and conceal the contributions. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine…
Prosecutors said Edwards "knowingly and willingly" accepted almost $1 million from two wealthy donors to hide former mistress Rielle Hunter and her pregnancy, then concealed the donations by filing false and misleading campaign disclosure reports…
Prosecutors argued that Edwards knowingly violated campaign finance laws by accepting the large contributions from Rachel Mellon and Fred Baron that went to support Hunter. Edwards "knew these rules well," Higdon said, and should have known that the contributions violated campaign finance laws.
A VP at the Center for Competitive Politics comments:
If Edwards is successfully prosecuted, we may be entering an "Alice in Wonderland" world, where conduct that would not draw the ire of civil law enforcement can lead to prison. Because Edwards could be convicted for taking a contribution that the Federal Election Commission, which regulates campaign finance, wouldn't even regard as a political donation.
This could happen if the jury, following the judge's final instructions, issued Friday, finds as a "fact" that the money given by Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, which Edwards and his associates used to hide his mistress, was given for "a purpose" of influencing a federal election. That purpose could be one of several purposes.
How in the world a jury – or, frankly, anyone – could say what another person's purpose in doing anything is astonishing. It also flies in the face of settled constitutional law.
Updates are coming. Stand by.
Update: I thought the protracted deliberations meant we were headed for a hung jury, but now I'm thinking it probably means that he'll be acquitted of the most serious charges at least.
Update: Hold the phone — looks like they might be more or less hung after all. CNN says they've reached a unanimous verdict on only one count out of six; the judge, apparently, has ordered them to get back to work on the others. Hoo boy.
Wondering now what'll happen if he's convicted on that count and they deadlock on the rest. Will the prosecution retry him given the heat they've taken for going after him this time and knowing that the next jury is likely to have a hard time too? Or will they take the conviction on a single count as a consolation prize and walk away?
Update: Edwards's lawyers have asked for a mistrial. Tick tock.
Update: The prosecution officially has a "situation" on its hands. From ABC's Rick Klein:
Edwards NOT GUILTY on Count 3; jury hung on all others
What do you do now if a mistrial is declared on the other five counts? You've already been embarrassed on one of the counts and have no assurances at all that a new jury will even reach a verdict on the others, let alone convict. Time for them to cut their losses and lick their wounds?
Update: Per ABC's banner headline, a mistrial has been declared. I'd bet heavily that the prosecution throws in the towel instead of scheduling a rematch.
Update: Via Fox News Insider, here's the man himself after the verdict reflecting on his moral failings and professing his love for the child whose paternity he once denied on national television. Two words: Edwards 2016?


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© 1996-2003 Jan Wolter, Steve Weiss
Prev: Introduction
Next: Part II: Compilation
./configure <options> |
For example, if you are installing Backtalk under the system's document root, you might specify:
--htmldir=/usr/local/apache/htdocs/backtalkor if you are installing Backtalk under a user account on the system, you might specify:
Note that --htmldir must always begin with a slash, and --htmlurl must always begin with "http://" or "https://".
For example, if you are installing Backtalk into the system's cgi-bin directory, you might specify:
Some systems are set up so that CGI programs can be installed in the same directories as HTML documents, with the CGI programs being identified by a file-name suffix like .cgi. In such cases your --cgidir and --cgiurl values may be the same as your --htmldir and --htmlurl values, but you should also set the --cgi-suffix=.cgi option, as described below.
Note that --cgidir must always begin with a slash, and --cgiurl must always begin with "http://" or "https://".
On many systems, the HTTP server runs as "nobody" (though we think it is better to set up a separate account called "www" or "http" for the HTTP server to run as). If you are running Apache, you can find out what user it is running as by looking at the User option in the Apache configuration files. Alternately you could do a ps and note what login most httpd processes are running as (there may be one running as 'root' - ignore it).
Note that if your CGI's will be running under 'suexec' or some other wrapper that causes them to be run by the owner of the file, then this should be the owner of the files, exactly the same value as the owner-id below.
You can specify the id number either by UID number, or by login name, like:
--httpd-id=nobodyNote that if you give the login name rather than the uid number, then the configure script needs to convert the name to a number. It is fairly clever about figuring out how to do this on most Unix systems, but if you are building a binary to be run on some other system, a conversion based on your build system's password database may not be correct. Use uid numbers in such cases.
It would be unwise to use root for this. Anything else is OK, though an account used for nothing else is best.
It can be set to the same value as --httpd-id. If you are running under suexec it must be the same. However, doing this in a non-suexec environment may weaken Backtalk's security since this would allow all cgi programs on your system to access the conference and user databases.
You can specify the id number either by UID number, or by login name, like:
--owner-id=backtalkIf you use the second form, the account must exist, so that the configure script can figure out its UID number. It is fairly clever about figuring out how to find the UID number on most Unix systems, but if you are building a binary to be run on some other system, a conversion based on your build system's password database may not be correct. Use uid numbers in such cases.
You can enter either the group name or group id number. Names will be converted to numbers by looking them out in the system's group database.
Command-line admin tools can be used only from the account defined by the 'owner_id' flag.
The first two are just prefixes that are used in the default values for the others:
The rest of the directory options designate specific directories where Backtalk files are installed, as outlined in the following table:
option | default | what's installed |
--cgidir | No default | CGI programs: backtalk |
--bindir | <exec-prefix>/bin | Command-line administrative commands: makeconf, decomp, btpasswd*, btvalid*, btrmuser*, btmkuser* |
--libexecdir | <exec-prefix>/libexec | Programs usually run by other programs: btc, partutil** |
--bbsdir | <prefix>/bbs | Conference data files. |
--userdir | <prefix>/user | User's settings and participation files*. |
--scriptdir | <prefix>/script | Backtalk scripts. |
--etcdir | <prefix>/etc | Read-mostly data files owned by owner-id. |
--passwddir | <prefix>/passwd | Read-mostly data files owned by httpd-id, mainly the auth database*. |
--logdir | <prefix>/log | Backtalk log files. |
--htmldir | No default | Images and style sheets. |
--mandir | <prefix>/man | Man pages. |
* These files are only installed for systems with Backtalk accounts.
** These files are only installed for systems with Unix accounts.
The disadvantages of this are lack of control over the appearance of the login window, lack of a logout button, and somewhat promiscuous sending of the user's password, leading to increased vulnerability to sniffers.
This may be insecure on some servers! Cookies are passed to CGI programs in environment variables. On most Unix systems, it is possible to see the values of environment variables in other user's processes. Thus if any untrusted users can login to or install CGI programs on the server you are using, then they could potentially steal a session ID and impersonate a user.
The first four options are for Backtalk accounts, maintained by Backtalk's user administration tools.
The last two options are for real Unix accounts. You'll need to use the standard Unix account administration tools to create and manage these accounts.
If you don't want to do anything much with groups, you can select this option and not create the Backtalk group file. Backtalk will assume the existance of three hardcoded groups: cfadm, gradm, and user, with group ID numbers 0, 1, and 2 respectively. This will give you a tiny performance gain.
Obviously these are all disabled if you use Unix logins - Backtalk should not have access to edit the Unix /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow file. In such installations account maintainance is done through the usual Unix tools.
If you are using a pre-existing authentication database, and already have a suite of tools to maintain it, then you may not want to enable Backtalk to edit that database as well. In such cases, you should configure with the --disable-edituser option.
If attachments are disabled, users will still be able to include links and images in Backtalk postings, but they will have to get those files onto the web via some route other than Backtalk.
The attachments themselves are always stored in disk files. The attachment index will be stored in an SQL database if you have configured Backtalk with an SQL server, or in a dbm hash file otherwise.
If your system seems to have both, then very likely you really have only aspell, and the thing that appears to be ispell is aspell pretending to be ispell. Aspell is probably generally to be prefered, though the foreign language support in ispell may (or may not) be better.
No other spell checkers are yet supported. In particular, ispell version 4.0 is a completely unrelated program, not a newer version of International Ispell and is not supported (and hard to find these days).
If you have and want to use aspell include the --with-aspell path. If it is installed in a directory not in your current path, do --with-aspell=/absolute/path/to/aspell. Ispell can be configured similarly.
Choosing this option weakens Backtalk's security. The file containing encrypted passwords must be readable to anyone who can log into any Unix account on the server. This is because the authentication database must be created and edited by programs running as you, but they must be readable to the httpd server, which does not run as you. Making it readable to the httpd server also makes it readable to all other users. In some cases, you may be able to improve on this, but mostly doing so requires an accommodating administrator, and if you had one, you wouldn't be running under suExec, would you?
If you are using real Unix accounts, then ignore this - the user's normal home directory is used instead.
Don't enable these unless you really mean to use Backtalk with Yapp or Picospan - the native file format is better.
The --with-picospan and --with-yapp options only really make sense with the --auth=passwd or --auth=shadow options and real Unix accounts. Yapp 3.0 can be configured to use non-unix accounts, in which case it should be used with the --auth=text and --ident=yapp options.
Options are being added to Backtalk to enable to keep some of it's databases, especially user databases, in an SQL database. At this time, only the PostgreSQL and MySQL options have been tested. The msql option is not even completely written and will not work. We hope to add Sybase and Oracle options in the future.
Important Note on Configuring SQL Servers:
To be able to compile and link Backtalk with the header files and
libraries for your SQL server, it may be necessary to explicitly give
the path names where the headers and libraries reside.
This is done by setting the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS
environment variables.
The syntax for doing this differs in different shells. If you have a borne-type shell, you might do:
CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/mysql LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib/mysql \ ./configure --with-mysql ...or if your system has the 'env' program, you could do:
env CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/mysql LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib/mysql \ ./configure --with-mysql ...The path names above are from a FreeBSD system with MySQL. They may be different on your system.
For msql installations, the path names will usually be /usr/local/Hughes/include and /usr/local/Hughes/lib respectively.
Everytime you click a link or button while using Backtalk, the Backtalk program must be loaded and run from scratch (this is a problem common to almost all CGI programs). This means that loading fast is more important for Backtalk than for many other programs. If Backtalk is configured with the --enable-dynaload directive, then some of the less commonly used parts of the program will be built as shared libraries, and only linked in on-demand only if they are needed. This makes the program a bit smaller and a bit faster to load.
These instructions will not give extensive details on the different low-level options. Lots of comments exist in the incl/config.h file, and most sites will never need any of these. We will list a few so you know they exist. Several of these may need to be changed when integrating with a foreign authentication system.